Sci Fi and Fantasy writing is not an excuse to be SHIT

[Belushi]

I like Greg Bear a lot as well. Proper hard SF.

 

[kropotkin]

Started well but I got really bored of it by the third novel, could have done with a good edit (though thats true of a lot of SF).

Just ordered Years fo Rice and Salt which I'm really looking forward to.

It could have done with a good edit- but the whole thing was incredible in scope. The science was fairly good as well (although that was before my science degree mind!).

I do seem to remember some turgid 100 pages detailing one of the Russian's dirigible flights though.

 

[Belushi]

It could have done with a good edit- but the whole thing was incredible in scope. The science was fairly good as well (although that was before my science degree mind!).

I do seem to remember some turgid 100 pages detailing one of the Russian's dirigible flights though.

Yeah, thats when it really begins to sag. Your right about the science, and of course lots of interesting politics.

 

[DotCommunist]

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang was written by the brilliant Kate Wilhelm (unfortunately nowadays she just writes cosy whodunnits). Connie Willis is weak by comparison.

I've pretty much given up on fantasty because there are so many dire trilogies around. I read all three Helliconia books because they were all I had with me on a rainy family holiday and they were dire. Can't understand why people like Brian Aldiss, at one time he was the only SF writer you saw on TV. Guy Gavriel Kay and Robert Holdstock write good fantasy.

Hellionia dire?

I remember the trilogy fondly. I'll dig it out for a re-read to see if its properly rubbish.

 

[kropotkin]

The Ringworld novels are great too- really imaginative. Who did them?

 

[DotCommunist]

I like Greg Bear a lot as well. Proper hard SF.

I'm a bit meh with GB. His style is to plodding and dry for me.

Adam Roberts on the other hand, now theres a man who can write science fiction bloody well.

 

[Belushi]

I'm a bit meh with GB. His style is to plodding and dry for me.

I dont find him too bad at all (compared to a lot of SF writers) but its the ideas I really enjoy in Bears books.

Adam Roberts on the other hand, now theres a man who can write science fiction bloody well

Havent heard of him, will put him on my list. Any recommended titles?

 

[Belushi]

The Ringworld novels are great too- really imaginative. Who did them?

Niven?

 

[DotCommunist]

I dont find him too bad at all (compared to a lot of SF writers) but its the ideas I really enjoy in Bears books.



Havent heard of him, will put him on my list. Any recommended titles?

On is my favorite. Swiftyl is his sequel to Gullivers travels and is very good.

Also, Stone and Land of the Headless are good

 

[kropotkin]

Niven. Yeah- they are wicked books.

 

[Chz]

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang was written by the brilliant Kate Wilhelm (unfortunately nowadays she just writes cosy whodunnits). Connie Willis is weak by comparison.

Oops. Yes, I knew something felt wrong about that. Good story though. You'd think with the scant number of women writing in SF I'd get that right. (For the record, Usula LeGuin has great prose but I can't stand her personally)

And yeah, Ringworld was when Niven could still write. His late stuff is absolutely *awful* though.

And am I the only person who thinks Orson Scott Card is really weak? He has a habit of starting off some long, tiresome, 5 book storyline with one decent book and then not really bothering with... oh, what's that thing? Ah yes, *writing* the other four.

 

[kropotkin]

Women: there is a great cyberpunk author called Pat Cadigan.

 

[DotCommunist]

Tricia Sullivan is a fantastic author. Maul is a v.good book

 

[DotCommunist]

Oops. Yes, I knew something felt wrong about that. Good story though. You'd think with the scant number of women writing in SF I'd get that right. (For the record, Usula LeGuin has great prose but I can't stand her personally)

And yeah, Ringworld was when Niven could still write. His late stuff is absolutely *awful* though.

And am I the only person who thinks Orson Scott Card is really weak? He has a habit of starting off some long, tiresome, 5 book storyline with one decent book and then not really bothering with... oh, what's that thing? Ah yes, *writing* the other four.

I always found him incredibly tedious.

However theres no point arguing with nerds who read him in their teens about it. He is forever in their memory as a God among insects

 

[Stigmata]

Niven. Yeah- they are wicked books.

The Mote in God's Eye, which he cowrote with Jerry Pournelle, is brilliant as well. Probably my favourite first contact story.

But it doesn't have the Ringworld's Puppeteers, sadly.

 

[kropotkin]

I read that on holiday last year and wasn't that impressed.
It felt like he thought he was slowly revealing something forehead-smackingly astounding, but that was quite remarkably underwhelming. the scrap in the museum/weapons store was ace though.

 

[Final]

Ever since J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis created the worlds of Middle Earth and Narnia, it seems like every windbag off the street thinks he can write great, original fantasy, too. The problem is that most of this "great, original fantasy" is actually poor, derivative fantasy. Frankly, we're sick of it, so we've compiled a list of rip-off tip-offs in the form of an exam. We think anybody considering writing a fantasy novel should be required to take this exam first. Answering "yes" to any one question results in failure and means that the prospective novel should be abandoned at once.

Exam questions here

Trying to think of some other questions to add to their list...

 

[mentalchik]

I always found him incredibly tedious.

However theres no point arguing with nerds who read him in their teens about it. He is forever in their memory as a God among insects

*makes note *

 

[DotCommunist]

Good as place as any for this riposte to the elitist writers of 'normal' fiction

http://www.sff.net/people/dtruesdale/wolverton1.htp

As a fantasist, I reject realism as a literary movement. I’m offended by the postmodern proscriptions that some of my writing professors crammed down my throat in college. Their whole approach to writing was based on blind acceptance of values that served as “defaults” for creating good literature in the absence of any other, more rational, approach.
I insist that my literary tools come from honest observation of what works in storytelling, rather than being derived from someone else’s political agenda.
​

The hodge-podge of literary “rules” that you learn in college will destroy your writing if you make them your master and not your servant. As writers, I believe we should study the mainstream. Learn the works of the best practitioners of our arts, study their craft. Seek to improve.
I agree with Gunn that there aren’t any editors in speculative fiction who hold with all the tenets of the postmodern realists. At the same time, there are those who hold with certain attitudes. More and more, I see authors and editors trying to establish themselves as members of some cadre of literary elite. Their work is increasingly enamored of postmodern techniques and values, and therefore becomes correspondingly mundane.
Everyone deserves good literature–the old, the young, the fantasists, the realists, the Republicans, the Communists, the Christians, the Wiccan–men, women, and people of every nationality and color.
To define any one literature as the only possible “good” to the exclusion of all others seems about as preposterous as trying to establish one flavor of ice cream as “good” to the exclusion of all others.
I’m offended by anyone who says that art “Must be done my way.”
​

 

[mentalchik]

DC, have you read The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfield ?

 

[DotCommunist]

I've not missis, whats it about? fiction/non?

 

[mentalchik]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Risen-Empire-Scott-Westerfeld/dp/1841493724


wicked read............well i like it anyhoo !

 

[MikeMcc]

My favourite fantasy author at the moment is Mark Chadbourn, his stories are very duex ex machinea, but that is the whole point of them.

 

[rich!]

My favourite fantasy author at the moment is Mark Chadbourn

The first series he wrote with the apppearance of magic to replace science I remember reading in the garden and becoming so shit-scared about monsters from the sky that I had to hide inside to continue.

The second series with the knights wasn't bad, but.

The third series I didn't get past chapter 4 of book 1.

 

[DotCommunist]

I mebtion with praise the good works of Hugh Cook, whom out of anyone irl or internet only Brainaddict has read

[FONT=Times New Roman, Serif]Sung was a land which was famous far and wide, simply because it was so often and so richly insulted. However, there was one visitor, more excitable than most, who developed a positive passion for criticising the place. Unfortunately, the pursuit of this hobby soon led him to take leave of the truth.
This unkind traveller once claimed that the king of Sung, the notable Skan Askander, was a derelict glutton with a monster for a son and a slug for a daughter. This was unkind to the daughter. While she was no great beauty, she was not a slug. After all, slugs do not have arms and legs - and, besides, slugs do not grow to that size.
There was a grain of truth in the traveller's statement, in as much as the son was a regrettable young man. However, soon afterwards, the son was accidentally drowned when he made the mistake of falling into a swamp with his hands and feet tied together and a knife sticking out of his back.
This tragedy did not encourage the traveller to extend his sympathies to the family. Instead, he invented fresh accusations. This wayfarer, an ignorant tourist if ever there was one, claimed that the king had leprosy. This was false. The king merely had a well-developed case of boils.
The man with the evil mouth was guilty of a further malignant slander when he stated that King Skan Askander was a cannibal. This was untrue. While it must be admitted that the king once ate one of his wives, he did not do so intentionally; the whole disgraceful episode was the fault of the chef, who was a drunkard, and who was subsequently severely reprimanded.


heh
[/FONT]

 

[rich!]

My favourite fantasy author at the moment is Mark Chadbourn

The first series he wrote with the apppearance of magic to replace science I remember reading in the garden and becoming so shit-scared about monsters from the sky that I had to hide inside to continue.

The second series with the knights wasn't bad, but.

The third series I didn't get past chapter 4 of book 1.

 

[rich!]

I mebtion with praise the good works of Hugh Cook, whom out of anyone irl or internet only Brainaddict has read

Ten volume series, started with "The Wizards and the Warriors"? Read them as they came out, and have re-read them a couple of times. Some really excellent ideas - that fighter pilot school being one of them. And the Hermit Crab. And those glass Bottles.

 

[DotCommunist]

Ten volume series, started with "The Wizards and the Warriors"? Read them as they came out, and have re-read them a couple of times. Some really excellent ideas - that fighter pilot school being one of them. And the Hermit Crab. And those glass Bottles.

Aye! an AI training various primitive peoples in advanced combat sim for a war that likely ended millenia ago

But I loved his prose. Jsut little sentances like 'The survivors failed to survive their survival'

always made me